EAB’s Madeleine Rhyneer and Ed Venit discuss the impact of the staffing crisis on student advising. The two urge student success leaders to use the current crisis as an impetus to adopt a more technology-forward approach to strengthen early warning systems and use time devoted to one-on-one student advising sessions to greater effect. Ed and Madeleine also offer a preview of CONNECTED22, the premier student success conference happening in Orlando this November.

University of Rochester Dean of Admissions, Robert Alexander, joins EAB’s Madeleine Rhyneer to discuss the impact of staffing challenges on admissions teams. Madeleine and Rob point out the dangers to institutions that ignore staff demands for greater flexibility. They also share ways to balance upward pressure on compensation with the need to focus on the core functions your teams have the capacity to execute.

EAB recently acquired Concourse Global and announced an expansion of the Greenlight Match program the two companies have been collaborating on for the past year. Greenlight Match flips the script on the traditional college application process by enabling underserved students to connect with and receive offers of admission and financial aid from participating local colleges—without completing a formal application. This process typically provides these students multiple offers early in the college application process, which boosts their confidence and helps them plan their finances. Concourse founder Joe Morrison joins EAB’s Jonathan April to discuss this new phase of their work.

In an interview that originally aired in April 2022, Inside Higher Ed Editor Scott Jaschik highlights the news stories he believes will have an outsized impact on higher education in the months and years to come. Jaschik is joined on the podcast by Carla Hickman, whose take on these issues is informed by her role as head of EAB’s Research division. The two explore issues ranging from the massive challenges facing community colleges to the game-changing legal fight over affirmative action in admissions.

EAB’s Tara Zirkel, Kayla Laughton, and Joshua Ddamulira share findings from their listening tour of more than 20 community college presidents to uncover the best ways to help Black and Latino men persist and succeed at community colleges. The three review statistics that underscore the challenge and isolate five top strategies to help you make significant improvement. They also discuss ways to overcome funding challenges by partnering with community-based organizations that can help create onramps to professional careers for these students.

EAB’s Madeleine Rhyneer and Michael Koppenheffer share findings from EAB’s newest survey of parents and guardians of prospective college applicants. The survey helps pinpoint parent preferences around the types and timing of communication they most appreciate from colleges, as well as the top concerns they have about the college search process. Michael and Madeleine share tips for institutions looking to make parent engagement a more central focus of their recruiting efforts. They also urge schools to lead with empathy and do everything in their power to educate parents about the challenges and opportunities that go along with sending one of their own off to college.

EAB’s Earl Sires and Mike Laracy examine the “digital sprawl” problem that plagues many college campuses and discuss tips and tools for cutting through all that complexity. Rather than relying on overworked programmers and statisticians, the two urge campus leaders to use an education data platform to tame the sprawl and facilitate direct access to the data by those tasked with making strategic decisions. They also demystify terms like predictive modeling and identify use cases that illustrate how critical advanced data analytics can be to establishing a more effective, data-informed culture at your school.

Joel Spiess explains how the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee uses retention grants to close equity gaps and offers tips on how other institutions can establish similar programs.

EAB’s Lilia Shea and Lauren Edmonds examine factors limiting the growth of undergraduate and graduate-level nursing programs despite strong demand. The two urge leaders to build partnerships with regional healthcare providers as a way to supplement faculty ranks and help secure clinical placements for students. They also discuss the value of recruiting future instructors from among the student body and suggest creative ways to recruit, reward, and retain preceptors.

Allison Akalonu joins Matt Sheldon to discuss ways to fix the broken transfer system. The two point to data showing the precipitous decline in transfer enrollments and explore ways to identify and fix institutional barriers that frustrate students and cause them to look elsewhere for a more receptive landing spot. They also offer guidance on better ways to engage students at every stage of the transfer funnel by using technology and human touch points more effectively.